CoHMR Aggregator (a review thread)

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You know, I appreciate your reviews, but I was just thinking... except for the final thoughts at the end, your reviews aren't really very useful for anyone except the author. The play by play comments don't really mean anything unless you already know what's going on in thea arc. Just a thought.

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Well, yeah. That's why I try to dump it into the author's thread if possible. The comments at the end are a quick summary for the folks at home, but this is basically the forum equivalent of sending tells to somebody as I play the arc, except they don't have to be online for it.

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I would love it if you would play my arc:
In Pursuit of Liberty - ID 221702


Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy.

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It's got to be up on www.cohmissionreview.com.

Been a bit of a long day so let's have a short one, shall we?

Illpracticed Malpractice (246459). Verdict - ***. Review on MA Forums Thread.

Been a long couple of days, yeah. Cleaning up after a sendoff for an RL friend leaving the country.

So let's go long: The Consequences of War pt 2 (241496). Verdict - ***. Review on MA Forums Thread.

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I would love it if you would play my arc:
In Pursuit of Liberty - ID 221702


Thanks so much. I hope you enjoy.

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It's got to be up on www.cohmissionreview.com.

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Cool site! I added it there.

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Been a long couple of days, yeah. Cleaning up after a sendoff for an RL friend leaving the country.

So let's go long: The Consequences of War pt 2 (241496). Verdict - ***. Review on MA Forums Thread.

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I've replied to the review you posted in my thread in my The Consequences of War Thread. Thanks for your time.

Since you asked, I present "All Consuming" (261148) and "Of Futures Past" (254599).

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Since you asked, I present "All Consuming" (261148) and "Of Futures Past" (254599).

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Cool. Looks like tonight's feature is Of Futures Past (254599). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

Tonight's arc: Future's End (255895). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.

Tonight's arc: Teen Phalanx Forever (67335). Verdict - *****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

The forums will be down for a couple days, and I have a couple arcs to play in the meantime - they'll go up on CoHMR and then in a backlog post here once everything lives again.

Well, good news! I kept up with this thread while I was away, so here are two reviews for two arcs!

Arc I: All Consuming (261148). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.
Arc II: In Pursuit of Liberty (221702). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

And... bad news. I have no queue. This probably won't be a problem tonight as I can't generally run arcs on Friday, but if I come up empty I guess I'll just pull one from the random on CoHMR.

@GlaziusF

Running on a high-40s brute who needs a couple bars. DB/Fire running on diff2 for actual bosses.

—

This really sounds more like Ouroboros material here. Especially since, uh, if this is so important, why keep it on ice for 7 years?

It makes sense if a time traveler recently intervened, though.

I’m getting kind of a cheeseball 80’s era vibe off the custom villains. Maybe because they’re led by the evil supercomputer from Captain Planet.

Really getting a cartoony vibe off this whole state of affairs, actually.

—

Hmm. Well, congratulations, you’ve got the second blue cave I’ve ever seen in all the Architect missions I’ve ever played.

…are there other lieuts than the dark miasma guy? I only seem to see him around.

You know, if the ALL was hoping this would never be found, you’d think someone in the mission would have said something to that effect.

—

Why does she want a book when the world is full of treasure? Why indeed, contact. Why indeed.

Man, if that’s not a line leading into a Very Special Episode I don’t know what is.

Liberty doesn’t have a “you lost me” text, which is nice to have on a map that’s slightly uneven like this outdoor one.

Fighting what looks to be a custom group that’s some DE mixed with a splash of Rularuu - are you using specific DE or the random spawner? If it’s specific DE, you should probably be using the random spawner because there are some DE (I noticed some Deathblossoms and Granites) who don’t give experience but still drop inspirations. Maybe they’re special trial spawns or something?

Anyway, the boss lady is a pretty nice fight — though if she had elec armor as her aura suggested the anti-knockback part of it didn’t seem to be working. But I have one suggestion for her powers. PLEASE drop Carrion Creepers. They stay up for a huge amount of time, even when the caster is dead, and never stop spawning little vines. I was five spawns away when I finally got the clue drop for her defeat.

—

Awwwww, not Red Atlas. Even though glowies are easy to find, bosses and allies like to hide in broken-walled chambers with smoke on top.

And the main enemy group is a bunch of high-level enemies, some of whom come from entirely different dimensions, thrown together for what the mission briefing as much as admits is no good reason.

Statesy, I know where the glowies are in Red Atlas, but just saying “near the building” doesn’t mean much. I’m surrounded by buildings! Some of them have fallen over! You can say “near the ruins of City Hall” and that’ll work out fine!

…oh, wait, this is modern-day Statesman jumped by these mooks? Not future implicitly-depowered Statesman? Last time anything held Statesman down it was an entire evil dimension.

—

So, last mission.

I really wish this custom group had another lieutenant. Stuff is packed so closely here that a hostage spawn has the very real possibility to put me up against more Fearsome Stares than I can carry Break Frees.

The stormer hostage is on the edge of a cliff. Because she’s running Hurricane even though she’s captured her guards are being blown down to the level below, and I have to act fast to wipe out the last one because his pathing back up only puts him not in range of Hurricane for about two seconds.

What can I say about the stormer? There are maps that ally stormers are good in. This is not one of them. Between the uncontrolled knockback and the sheer cliffs I wound up clearing out most of the valley even though absolutely no objectives were there, just because the stormer galed something down, all the allies chased it, and because of tornado/lightning storm/runners another group down below was alerted, and so on, and so on.

Her earth control primary doesn’t necessarily bring that crazy knockback under control.

Given how much the nav bar wanted me to find Statesman, I was expecting something broken like extreme inv/extreme SS from the last boss. His actual powerset, I didn’t really need Statesey to make much of a dent in his health bar.

Also, he gets flattened against the forcefield at the back of the graveyard by a gale in fine old Wile E. Coyote fashion.

—

Storyline - ***. And… that kinda encapsulates my feelings about the arc in general and its story in particular. I can’t take it seriously. But I don’t know if I’m supposed to. I would not be surprised at all to find that this is a bedtime story being told to Rose Jones, a 7-year old girl somewhere in Paragon City with a sparkly pink poster of Ms Liberty on her wall. It operates under its own brand of dream logic, which is the best way I can think of to explain MAL, an evil guy who sits around doing evil things and takes away the costume and swords from Rose Jones in the future so she’ll never grow up to be a superhero. (There’s a guy who’s got a hate on for Statesman and put together his own band of nefarious no-goodniks and born malcontents in order to hand him his big red butt in a sling. His name’s Lord Recluse. And even if MAL has himself a time machine, he feels a little less than menacing next to our unfriendly neighborhood spider-man.) But if I am just a bit part in a bedtime story, I’d like a contact who reflects that. Princess Bride-style, maybe?

Design - **. The lack of a second lieutenant in the custom group leads to waaaaayyyyy too much incoming fear. Most of the maps are pretty quiet as far as dialogue is concerned - the patrols don’t talk, and even allies don’t speak up when they get separated from you. And acknowledging that the future group is just a random mishmash doesn’t really make it any less a random mishmash. Here’s an idea for free - in the future there isn’t any native life on this Earth. Visitors come to scavenge from other dimensions - the Rikti and Axis America and Praetorians and Rularuu and Psychic Clockwork and another dimension’s Nemesis - but generally they don’t fight because there’s way more planet than any one group can salvage from.

Gameplay - ***. Pretty much down to the stormer adding 10 minutes of clearing in the valley by galing somebody off the edge and everyone chasing. Twice.

Detail - **. The smallest mook in MAL’s army of evil has a longer bio than MAL himself. That just ain’t right. Minions get a couple lines, the master has a history. A lot of the interactible objects are missing interrupt and completion text - the portal in the outdoor map has an empty interact bar. And Ms. Liberty flips back and forth between earnestly begging for my help in the pre-mission and snapping at me for not having finished yet when I bug her. It got to the point where I wondered if I was doing something nefarious for a villain wearing a clever disguise.

Overall - **. A simple story that really needs a better framing device, and some tweaks to make a more evenly weighted custom group and a less frustrating final mission.

First of all, now that I can post on these boards again, thanks for your review of "Through Rose-Tinted Glasses" way back. I don't completely agree about Philip's fate being too vague, (it was sort of the point) but that's my only minor gripe.

Secondly, if you're out of arcs to play, can I request The Sleeping Star please? (53951)

Thanks.

Tonight's arc: The Sleeping Star (53951). Verdict - ****. Review below in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Running this on an ice/axe tanker, high 30s, diff 2 for real boss fights.

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Man, either it's the lighting in the portrait window or that contact needs a better dye job.

Hmm. Interesting ally, certainly, makes some of the things the contact says make sense. But can she not have flight? Flight allies do this thing where they clip through the ground, get stuck, and stop following you.

Also I think from a narrative perspective all the suspicious people should show up after you spring the ally. Because I mowed down two of 'em on the way there, so it wasn't much of a search.

Void Slayer, though? This ain't good.

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Looks like a recurring ally. Not a bad gimmick.

Huh. Guess it's got to be spirit world, hydra world, or Eden for forested places. Makes it feel strange and mystical, at least.

Interesting customs here. Guess you're going for a sort of "half-dwarf" or "half nova" feel?

Boss goes down easily enough... and I wonder which girl he was talking about. I was expecting my ally from mission 1 here, but...

Well, we'll see what happens on return.

Huh. I figured she was coming with me into the forest, but I guess not.

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Hmm. From what I've seen of a cyst crystal, it's more of a gateway than just a big bag of Nictus. But hey, flying alien laser squids in crystal ships is alright by me.

Quick little interlude in a rather pedestrian Council base. It's kind of weird that the Archon in charge has no idea why the girl's so important when he's got so much information about her.

Maybe I could riffle through a long list of prisoner transfers and find her?

...hmm. Sunstorm seems to have forgotten about the "traitor Peacebringers" who are driven to exterminate Warshades at all costs. One of those probably wouldn't mind being off-radar.

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Hmm! Wonder what Sunstorm's going to look like, or does he actually have a real model?

Oh. A PPD awakened?

Wait, dude's actually PPD. This must be the version villains fight, since his AP civies look very different.

Oh. Hey there, AV.

Fortunately there aren't enough of us for her turbo heal to make her unfightable.

So, going through the clues, it looks like she... bonded to the most anemic Kheldian ever.

What, does she have eyes that can see the death of all things, or something?

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Oh. Okay. So the splinter 5th are going to get awesome space lasers. Well, maybe Galaxy-level awesome.

...I can't say that this is going to make them much of a threat? But given the sorts of things they'd do to get 'em I can see why Sunstorm is worried.

Heh. Oh, wow. I was expecting an ally to come with, and I cleared out the whole mission before I noticed the glowie tucked away in an alcove in the first room. Ouch.

...oh boy, it's a boss with rage. Autohit double damage for two minutes. That's a nice complement to my absolutely no resistances.

The walk out is really kinda harrowing. There's basically no room to dodge around the various enemies, the escort nukes any stealth you might have been running, and I was always worried that by going fast enough to not get mowed down I'd lose the kid.

It's definitely got the feel of an escape sequence, but if I wasn't running this solo some of those spawns would turn into a wall of human flesh.

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Storyline - ***. There are a couple things I have a problem with here. First, Sunstorm accidentally sends my contact into the exact camouflaged 5th Column base the raid comes from. That's some epic oops there. Second, I find it hard to believe that nobody in the Council or 5th has investigated what happens when the Kheldian a human bonds to is really, really weak, as that seems to be the only reason why anybody wants Alice to begin with.

Design - ****. The extra Galaxy troopers are a nice touch, but they only get used like once. I would've expected them to be working in Arakhn's base, at least. The 5th Column EB is a pretty nice clone of the 5th look.

Gameplay - ***. Rage is really just the "go stand somewhere else for 2 minutes" power for me, just because of how good the bonuses are to an NPC. That plus the missing an early glowie and clearing out the entire base looking for a hostage were the major frustrations. (maybe instead of a glowie, find her unconscious and escort her the 20 feet to the door?)

Detail - ****. Pretty solid, but I was expecting more of a custom bio on most of the boss spawns, like the "suspicious" freak and void slayer and the Dark Dwarf in the forest.

Overall - ****. Some of the gameplay harfs were just down to me missing something obvious, and the storyline isn't weak enough to pull this down too far.

I somehow knew that you would not care for the arc. In general it seems to fluctuate wildly between 3 and 5 stars.

Here are my responses:

Liking something is such a matter of taste and I have found, having gotten completely opposite advice, it is impossible to please everyone. (Ex one reviewer said change Little Liberty to little Liberty, the next said why little MUST be Little). This is just one example. I have gotten too easy and then too hard. Reading my reviews is a bit like reading Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.

As a general comment on the Allies, if you don’t like them don’t use them. They are there for people who need them. This way the arc could be easy on low level for those with less skill, and more of a challenge for more skilled players if set on a high level.

“I can’t take it seriously. But I don’t know if I’m supposed to. I would not be surprised at all to find that this is a bedtime story being told to Rose Jones.”

BINGO, in fact you almost hit the nail on the head here. One reviewer who really liked it called it “A Modern Day Fairy Tale”. The mission description now says ” WARNING: This arc may contain some humor. Play at your own risk!”. The intent of the arc is an origin story that doesn’t take itself SO seriously. Honestly, serious arcs at times are VERY boring. The risk with humor is not everyone gets it.

“The lack of a second lieutenant in the custom group leads to waaaaayyyyy too much incoming fear.”

I wish I could add a second lieutenant, and in fact tried, but I am at 99% space. What I did instead was change a minion to a Lt. This seemed to help.

“Detail - **. The smallest mook in MAL’s army of evil has a longer bio than MAL himself. That just ain’t right. Minions get a couple lines, the master has a history. A lot of the interactible objects are missing interrupt and completion text - the portal in the outdoor map has an empty interact bar. And Ms. Liberty flips back and forth between earnestly begging for my help in the pre-mission and snapping at me for not having finished yet when I bug her. It got to the point where I wondered if I was doing something nefarious for a villain wearing a clever disguise”.

The above is what I take the most exception to; like it or not, the mission is full of detail, in fact 99% full. You contradict yourself by saying the "The smallest mook in MAL’s army of evil has a longer bio than MAL himself". With a statement like this, how can the arc deserve the 2 on detail? Should MAL have more bio, yes? Did you read the final clue of mission 5? Details on him were there. Because of space issues, I removed the clue and moved the details to his bio. As to your object comment, you said "A lot of the interactible objects are missing interrupt and completion text." I found only one missing completion text which I added. As to the missing interrupt text? Well I maxed out on space, and as it is visually obvious that you have been interrupted, I chose to keep other more important text instead.

How exactly does Ms. Liberty flipping have ANYTHING to do with lack of detail? That in fact was by intent. Some find it amusing, obviously you didn’t. There are tons of long winded intro dialogues out there that are so boring I can barely stand to read them.

This arc quite obviously is not for everyone. To play and enjoy it, you need to be someone appreciates light-hearted fun and who takes the arc as intended. I am no Shakespeare and I would never try to be. So many people in life take themselves WAY too seriously. I started this arc as a challenge to myself to create a 5 star arc. I have found that this is extremely difficult, in fact close to impossible. My hope now is that some people out there enjoy it. The criticism I have received at times has been valid and at times way too harsh; but the praise has been awesome! In the end, that makes it worth it.

Thanks for your feedback and detailed review.

Thanks for the review!

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Originally Posted by GlaziusF Hmm. Interesting ally, certainly, makes some of the things the contact says make sense. But can she not have flight? Flight allies do this thing where they clip through the ground, get stuck, and stop following you.

I've not noticed this bug myself, but I'll see about removing it. My main problem if I do is whe won't be easily able to keep up with players who do have fly/SJ etc

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Also I think from a narrative perspective all the suspicious people should show up after you spring the ally. Because I mowed down two of 'em on the way there, so it wasn't much of a search. Void Slayer, though? This ain't good.

Currently the Void and the Carnie (who is optional) are set to spawn after you rescue the ally. I left the other spawning from the start of the mission because I didn't want to have players spend too much time re-searching areas they've already been after rescuing the ally.

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Interesting customs here. Guess you're going for a sort of "half-dwarf" or "half nova" feel?

They're really just Nictus in human bodies, like Arakhn.

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Boss goes down easily enough... and I wonder which girl he was talking about. I was expecting my ally from mission 1 here, but... Well, we'll see what happens on return. Huh. I figured she was coming with me into the forest, but I guess not.

Since I can't control the spawning on outdoor maps, the ally is an optional spawn on that mission. It's been suggested that I could have the boss spawn after you rescue her, but that means the players would have to either go back and search the map again, or have the boss spawn on top of them.

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Hmm! Wonder what Sunstorm's going to look like, or does he actually have a real model? Oh. A PPD awakened? Wait, dude's actually PPD. This must be the version villains fight, since his AP civies look very different.

If I could, I would have Sunstorm in his AP costume, but you can't make custom PBs yet so I have to settle for this PPD version.

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...oh boy, it's a boss with rage. Autohit double damage for two minutes. That's a nice complement to my absolutely no resistances.

He's got Rage? I hadn't noticed - maybe it was added in in a patch or something. I'll go fix that immediately.

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Storyline - ***. There are a couple things I have a problem with here. First, Sunstorm accidentally sends my contact into the exact camouflaged 5th Column base the raid comes from. That's some epic oops there. Second, I find it hard to believe that nobody in the Council or 5th has investigated what happens when the Kheldian a human bonds to is really, really weak, as that seems to be the only reason why anybody wants Alice to begin with.

That's a contrivance, I admit, but in his defence he was trying to send her to the weakest Council base he knew of... but there was a reason it looked weak. As for Alice's weakness, it makes sense to me that a scientist would want to experiment on the weakest subject he could find before moving on to tougher ones. Alice's situation opens their eyes to possibilities they hadn't really considerd before - forcing a Kheldian/Nictus to bond to a human under the human's complete control.
If this isn't communicated well enough in the arc, I guess I need to do some rewriting.

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Design - ****. The extra Galaxy troopers are a nice touch, but they only get used like once. I would've expected them to be working in Arakhn's base, at least. The 5th Column EB is a pretty nice clone of the 5th look.

The custom Nictus are supposed to show up in the boss groups and ambushes in the 5th mission, but they hardly ever seen to while solo it seems.

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Gameplay - ***. Rage is really just the "go stand somewhere else for 2 minutes" power for me, just because of how good the bonuses are to an NPC. That plus the missing an early glowie and clearing out the entire base looking for a hostage were the major frustrations. (maybe instead of a glowie, find her unconscious and escort her the 20 feet to the door?)

I experimented with this for a long time, but setting her up as a rescue or ally never worked well IMO - she's supposed to be so close to death that walking would be impossible. The ideal option would be if we could get a rescue to vanish or teleport out, but that option's not there yet.
What I'll do for now is put in a patrol in the middle, saying "We'd better go dispose of that bodybag by the base entrance." Hopefully anyone who missed the glowie will head back to check.

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Overall - ****. Some of the gameplay harfs were just down to me missing something obvious, and the storyline isn't weak enough to pull this down too far.

Thanks again for the review.

My first three arcs are on CoH Mission Review, with the others to be posted soon (they've been submitted), if you have chance please check them out.

Thanks in advance.

Tonight's arc: Time's Arrow (2567). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Huh. Little leery since the description calls it a sequel to 2 other arcs, but they're more like prequels, am I right?

Running this on diff 2 on a high-40s spine/regen scrapper.

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Heh. The lighting makes it look like the contact has a big A insignia. But okay. Dude got abducted probably by Malta, my turn to be a hero's hero.

Huh. Freakshow? Well, a warehouse, anyway.

Nope, not Freakshow. Hello, customs.

Hello, Psion. You don't have a description.

Hello, E. Man, your bio's a tall drink of water. I think paragraphs work now.

You gonna actually fight stuff here? No? S'cool, s'cool.

Oh, I'm escorting you. Man, that was some tough terrain, but OK I'll just---

Hi mysterious enemy. ...your description, however, is less mysterious.

Hi guy named Rad who spawned because the MA likes to give bosses on diff 2 now! ...you sound like you shouldn't be a random in-mission boss but somebody important.

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Man. Time travel. Eventually it just becomes a giant flurry of one-upsmanship. Wonder how it's gonna get caught up this time out.

Hey there, intro text. Last mission wasn't in a cave, so why are you talking about the last one?

Hi again E. You fightin' this time! That's good. That's good.

Hi glowie at the front of the cave. ...you've got just what I came for? Well, that was nice of you. And there's nothing between us and the exit, either! Is that a mistake in placement?

Well, let's find this leader, then.

(also I would like a clue about the sword please)

...whoa, what? I thought this was when he got his sword, and here we are running into a submarine base?

Ah, there's the mysterious boss who is Rad from the first mission. He also needs a mysterious description.

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...wow, that's a giant exposition dump there. All in one paragraph, too. Impressive.

Maybe spread that out a little, there are at least a couple separate ideas at work there.

Aw, man, the Shaper cave? Like two-thirds of this thing is special spawns for the task force and therefore empty in MA.

Hi there, portal. You're a portent.

Huh. Kinglyman is actually down one of the side chambers, not in one of the big open rooms. The Law Cast is a help there.

You should probably rewrite the clue for the glowie now that it's a chained objective.

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Man, it never feels right using time travel to mess things up.

...whoa.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa.

Whoa.

I have to wreck the Honoree's chance to escape from the Rikti for this guy?

...um.

Wait a second.

Per the contact, this is during the Rikti invasion.

Hero One went into the Rikti homeworld to seal it off from our reality at the very end of the Rikti invasion.

He hasn't had a chance to come back until recently.

There is a slight problem here.

Also vanguard bosses (colonels, I think) can give you Curse of Weariness, which someone doing AE runs is not guaranteed to have any way to lift, or the means to buy said way.

Why am I still starting up the Rikti generators when Escalon is down and his sword is shattered?

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Awwwww geez. Red Atlas/Agony Hall. Broken terrain, bosses hiding in little tiny rooms surrounded by broken walls and covered with smoke.

So here's some hilarity: in the battles, Longbow have enough presence to have Wardens. Wardens are freakin' wrecking machines, so basically the entire map fills up with my allies and entire other spawns just get completely wrecked. I kinda half-heartedly join the battle to drop Medea, and i kite Arrow into a couple of spawns and he drops...

Then I rescue Escalus. And then I try to hunt down the last coordinator in a map full of bosses already.

Man, that doesn't make any sense. Longbow have handled these dudes and the big bosses are down.

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Storyline - **. It started out promising! But then there was the part where I had to sacrifice the Honoree (who shouldn't actually have existed yet) to save this guy and I'm like, wouldn't Hero 1 be more useful on balance? And then in the final battle he can basically sit on the sidelines while Longbow cleans up.

Design - **. Don't get me wrong, the enemy designs are pretty nice, and the custom powers are satisfying to deal with. But the submarine base and Shaper cave are somewhat questionable choices, objectives show up weirdly clumped together, important commanders show up with the rank and file, the final battle ends up greatly in favor of Longbow, and I have to hunt down the small fry to finish the final battle.

Gameplay - ****. Hunting down bosses through Red Atlas is always a chore. More so if I get "false positives" from other bosses showing up.

Detail - ***. Accept texts and bug texts are pretty perfunctory, one of the customs is missing a description entirely, and a lot of the arc text assumes I've been able to read and remember Escalus's giant description - for example the legend of the original king and his sword.

Overall - **. A pretty good setup that takes a hard left into a giant continuity snarl and ends on an anticlimax.

Okay, I've gone through the past review links in the thread, which didn't convert when the boards converted, and fixed them to work with the new boards.

Also I've only got one guy's arcs in the queue, so I'm pulling some random ones for future days.

Tonight's mission is a random one from CoH Mission Review, To Catch a Firebird (105889). Verdict - ***. Since I couldn't find a thread on these boards for the arc, the review gets dumped into the thread below.